About David L's Blog

My name is David Lemphers, and I'm a Senior Program Manager on the Windows Azure team, based in Redmond, WA, United States. I'm originally from Australia, so make sure you drop me a line and say g'day mate!

Today I resigned from Microsoft. While I’m leaving to take a big step in a new direction, I have to say, it’s with very mixed emotions. Five and a half years ago , I started a journey that changed me forever. Not only was it the realization of a teenage...

So one of the features of .NET 4 that I’ve been eagerly awaiting is the new Parallel Programming “stuff”. Now, anyone who has worked in concurrent environments knows, it’s daunting to learn a new set of technologies, constructs, tools, etc. For those...

So there is nothing I find nicer than a well formatted, REST based URL. Take for example: http://myhost/customer/2/orders As a way to retrieve all orders for customer number 2. There is also nothing I like more than WCF ! The flexibility to declaratively...

So one thing I’ve been wanting to do since moving from the Windows Azure team to the Pivot team, is build a Pivot Dynamic Server in Windows Azure. Well, tonight I decided to do just that, allow me to expatiate! ;0 Let’s start with a basic overview of...

One of the things I love about working for Microsoft is the amazing amounts of opportunity to follow your passions. I’ve been very fortunate over my five years (yep, I celebrate 5 years at Microsoft this month) to have explored a number of great roles...

I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it! And neither could Coatesy ! http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat/archive/2010/01/27/windows-azure-user-group-briefings.aspx That’s right, I’m being crated up and shipped back home to Terra Australis for a week of Windows Azure...

So I’m doing some prototyping at the moment and one of the most frustrating aspects of getting started with any prototype is capturing the: Flow Main Screens Specification I think in mind maps, so one of my biggest problems when starting a new project...

So a while back I blogged a little sample code on how to get some info about what’s happening inside your instance using a simple process within a web page. Looking Inside Windows Azure! Well, I decided to refresh this code sample using one of my favorite...

So one thing I’ve been terribly slack about since returning from PDC09 has been posting my session clip and code snippets for folks to download/reference, so my sincerest apologies, and without further ado:
1. My session
2. My slide deck ...

So I’ve been working on a project, and I came across a little challenge that I thought folks may be interested in the solution to. So, the problem is this, I have a dependency on a bunch of files that I need access to from my worker role in the cloud...

So I was having lunch with our Programmer Writer, Tamra Myers the other day, and we got onto the conversation of documentation. I’m a huge Huge HUGE fan of documentation, in fact, when I coded in anger, I was known for my extensive, well written, downright...

One of the many challenges to building a cloud is your addressing strategy. Now, addressing is an issue for any public facing Internal application, but for clouds, the issues increase because of the dynamic nature of deploying applications that require...

So I was talking to an old friend yesterday about building software, and we both came to the conclusion that there are some things you need to learn: From books From others From doing We then got onto the topic of cloud computing, he works in the same...

OK, so MattT (thanks for the feedback on my blog too Matt :)) pinged me and asked if something had changed in the way Live ID auth worked in Windows Azure. He was looking around Bing for some samples, and came across this post but couldn’t get it working...

So one of the things I like to do, all of the time, is trace. It started when I was a little child, and the rest of the kids could draw really good and stuff, and I couldn’t, so I would get pictures of horses and trace around them… Now that I’m older...

So Mohit and I were at WPC last week, and while we were hanging in the booth, a customer came up with a very interesting problem. Essentially, the customer needed to be able to have their Word documents saved to Windows Azure, in a format that could be...

Here is my session from the WPC09 in New Orleans: Lap around Windows Azure, Business Edition
Big thanks to Eilert Hanoa from Mamut ASA for his help with the session, and to everyone who attended. :)
Hope everyone enjoyed WPC! :)
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So one of my favorite parts of working in the Windows Azure team is the camaraderie that grows when you take a bunch of really smart people and apply them to a big problem. I’m very fortunate to be part of three extremely interesting Windows Azure v-teams...

So I’ve been working on a proof of concept this past week, and one of the biggest issues I’ve had has been trying to see what has been going on with my “container” when I deploy my app to Windows Azure. It’s not that the logs aren’t good enough, but sometimes...

So anytime you’re doing something more than once, there is an opportunity to do it better every consecutive time. Over my career, I’ve worked in a number of different project teams; software teams, hardware teams, software/hardware teams, even a marketing...

So one of the key responsibilities of a Program Manager at Microsoft is to drive features. Features are the same as functions in some software nomenclature, and essentially, they map to something the software performs to satisfy a customer need. Now,...

I came across this video today and really found it simple yet powerful. For me, the best part of this video is it puts a real context around the whole S+S story, which to date, has been pretty hard to decipher. The main takeaway as I see it, is that you...

When designing any piece of software, there are always going to be design tenants that you practice based on the type of software being developed. For service software that is designed for a global, business critical audience, there are three key tenets...

OK folks, so all the announcements have been made for Mix , so it’s time to get cranking! We have a new release of tools and SDK bits. First, you’ll need to install some pre-reqs, but only if you are going to exploit some of the new capabilities : Hotfix...